People often ask me, “Harriet, why are you in MAAD? Do you play a lot of video games?”
And to this, I reply, “No, I actually do not.”
Don’t get me wrong, I grew up surrounded by games and toys and an interest in storytelling. I fell asleep to my mother’s improvised tales of our personally conjured spy character, “Margaret Mercury”, and played chess with my brothers. I waited patiently in genderless lines to play four-square at recess and I played *a lot* of 2008 flash games on various corners of the internet. I even had short spells of playing console games like “Little Big Planet” and have fond memories of my older brother buying me Super Paper Mario for my 7th birthday. However, my experience with video games has always had gendered undertones despite my relationship with gaming and play in general being so comfortable. So, I am not in MAAD because I am a gamer, but, rather, because I am not one.
Reading Eric Rosenfield’s Doom, Myst, and the War for the Soul of Video Games was a cathartic experience for me. It was validating to read something that confirmed what I had often felt and believed was true. The relationship between the products we make, the way we market them, and the culture, both from which they emerge and which is consequently created, are complicated tools of social insurance. By which I mean they are tools which can be weaponized or leveraged to reinforce certain ways of being and thinking. Notably, an example of this is something like De Beers, who single-handedly manufactured diamond scarcity, marketed diamond rings as a household staple of love, and solidified their importance by denouncing the possibility of resale during The Great Depression. The way we buy and use things can be woven into our cultural fabric– sometimes without our cooperation or consent.
Furthermore, games have always been a fundamental part of the human experience. From cavemen to capitalists, we have always found joy in games and play in one way or another. I took a course last year called “Gaming History” and discussed this in greater detail (big recommendation for this course btw**). But it really made me think: Why is it that video games are so isolated culturally? We see this kind of gendered exclusion in things like Sports and that’s always been backed up by the obtuse argument that men are predisposed to be better at physical activities. However, in a world where you can be anything; do anything. In a world where the game is literally whatever you want in whatever context, why would the industry exclude anyone for any reason? Why would there only be one type of game and gamer? (generalizing this // mostly mainstream industry^^^)
All this to say, Rosenfield’s message really resonated with me because it laid out the unfortunate and exclusionary pipeline of 80’s/90’s console boys to game designers. There aren’t many games made by and for women because the popular community is exclusionary along all chronological intersections. To reiterate what Rosenfield says, I know many women who enjoy stereotypically masculine games, but that doesn’t mean that ignoring the female market as a whole is sustainable, fair, or conducive to a progressive culture. Another thing this makes me wonder is to what extent do women have to assimilate into traditional video game culture in order to succeed in the community/industry?
In high school, I dropped out of computer science. For a couple of reasons, but mostly because I saw the number of women in my class diminish year after year. Perhaps even more upsetting was the fact that I witnessed the women who did stay become smaller. They stopped filling up rooms with laughter and inviting conversation. The women who once dressed in bright colours or short skirts drained their clothes to a warm grey-tone which wasn’t as loud (not that there’s anything wrong with dressing like this–it just wasn’t how they normally dressed). I noticed they became appreciative of male tolerance. They were grateful they were allowed to be there. I, however, was less grateful and just left the class entirely, so it seems like they got the last laugh for that one…
But now, as a college student, I study CS and media art (and econ but we don’t talk about that). Both fields have, at some point, made me feel isolated from their respective cultures. However, I now feel excited by the opportunity to create new things in an industry that, at its core, is limitless. The limits we have in place now are driven by capitalism and greed as well as misogyny and other personal biases. But video games fundamentally are whatever you make them. I’m excited by the possibility to be able to make things that break this mold and hopefully help break the mold of the industry.
Really powerful blog post and as someone who I guess could be labeled as a “gamer girl” (really that term carries so much stigma) I could relate to all you’re talking about. I found it really interesting how you draw the comparison of how video games have been traditionally marketed to the way diamonds were marketed in a manner that has caused us as a society to see diamonds as a sign of love, whereas in the case of video games the way they have been marketed has caused video games to be perceived as exclusionary and masculine in culture. From my own personal experience, I have definitely seen this exclusion where most of the games I play have much smaller female player bases and how in a lot of gamer cultures objectifying and also insulting women who play games is seen as normal. This seems to extend further to working in the video game industry just look at the Blizzard Activision lawsuits as well as Riot Games lawsuits that happened in recent years. However, despite all of this I am really optimistic of where the industry is heading as I feel like it is becoming more progressive and am hoping in the future to work in the industry (specifically with marketing) and maybe in the future misogyny and exclusion won’t be as normalized in gaming culture.
Something that your article got me thinking about is esports and how the gender divide is present there, even though it removes the physical barriers and argument that is typically applied to regular sports– that men are physically predisposed to being better athletes. In theory, esport skill isn’t something that can be helped by an extra few inches of height or a genetic predisposition to build muscle or metabolize faster; it’s something that boys and girls should be able to (again, in theory) compete in the same level at. And yet esports competition is dominated by men– enough that the male population of gamers gets in their head that men are predisposed to just be better at games in general. I think a lot of parallels can be drawn between the advent of the esports world, which, similar to the game design world, marketed itself first and exclusively to men– but it’s certainly an interesting topic that has plenty to be said about going forward.
Also, I just want to say that I really like the phrase “I am not in MAAD because I am a gamer, but, rather, because I am not one.” I myself might be a girl gamer– there really is no way to say that without sounding so cringe, is there?– in MAAD, but I totally get your reasoning and agree with the commentor above that this is a super powerful article.